Farewell to 2009

As you can see Skeeter is still hopeful. This was taken Dec 26 I believe. We had more snow earlier and then it melted and "wore away" in the cold. Now we again have an inch or so, not much but enough to cover some of the dry remains of last summer.
James and I had a very quiet Christmas with a wonderful roast lamb for dinner at our friend Betty's. Her daughter-in-law is French and French Canadian and this is a part of her French heritage, her grandfather coming from France with Moroccan heritage. Dinner was delicious.

November

James has been taking pictures through the slider. This little fellow, a Downy Woodpecker, spent some time peeking in all the cracks on the deck looking for lunch.

















We have more birds and more variety of birds at the feeder than in previous years.
















This wee fellow is a chickadee of which we've had lots in the past but this year we are being visited by the various finches, most just stripy browns at this time of year but we also have the rosy headed House Finches and I'm sure I saw a Red Poll yesterday. His whole body was rosy and he had the little red stripes on his head; such a bright little fellow.
Sadly James was not lurking about with the camera when he appeared.
We have decided to discourage the cats at the feeder, after all, it is a bird feeder, not a cat feeder! James caught Skeeter sitting on top the other day. It would be a pretty foolish bird who would fly in to that welcome.
Today James added another 20 inches height to the pipe the feeder is mounted on. Take that cats!

Changes

Tuesday I put my sister on the bus to return to Kelowna. There was a finality to it.
Nearly 3 weeks ago she'd come to visit our mom and celebrate our 60th birthday on October 5. We'd had a couple really nice visits with our mom and then on the 6th she had a massive stroke from which she never regained any consciousness or reflex or anything. She slipped peacefully away in the the very early morning of October 10.
On the Sunday was the funeral of our very close friend's dad. Her mom had passed away 5 months earlier. It has been a time of goodbyes.
In the spring when the wild flowers are blooming we will have a celebration of life for our mom.
I am giving myself some time to breathe deep and reorder.
One is never really ready for these things.

Musings

I have been building birdhouses for 15 years now but have built very few these past few years as I've been having numbers of hand surgeries however, having had a surgery this spring as a result of too enthusiastic knitting I think I can return to birdhouses, but on a lesser scale. The secret, no doubt, is in learning to pace oneself.
Instead of trying to sell my houses all over the Kootenays and Northern Idaho I plan to only build and sell a limited number from our own gallery here at home, and that will also give me time to work more in fabric. I am planning on taking a couple classes this summer.
Also, The College of the Rockies Creston campus is again offering classes this summer in the arts. James will be teaching his Exploring Experimental Approaches to working with Acrylics.
This year the classes are of a 3 day duration, most on weekends.
I will teach a class on Building a Functional Art Birdhouse, showing people how to build a birdhouse that is playful and decorative, but also a safe healthy home for the birds.
The brochure is poorly done this year but I am glad to send people details myself.
The college can be reached at 1.866.740.2687 or 250.428.5332 or emailed at creston@cotr.bc.ca . The brochure lists my class as "Birdhouses" and gives no indication of the rustic, funky houses I build.

Here's Skeeter perched on Garth Huscroft's panther,

and trying to look innocent like she doesn't hear any baby birds!

And here is Bandy doing his Yin & Yang thing with the panther.

My how the times do fly .......

So, somewhere the last month and a half has flown by. When last I wrote Arts and Culture Week was just on and it seemed very soon after my most recent hand surgery. During that week there was an afternoon workshop and presentation by Don Maybe on Artist Trading Cards and this is a photo of the cards I made that afternoon. They are primarily fabric though there's a bit of detritus from the back lot made its way in too. The glue I used is an excellent heavy bodied glue called "Yes."

This picture was actually taken May 8 just after a lovely heavy shower. The forsythia, which I had threatened to hack down because it had bloomed so poorly for years rewarded my good pruning last year with a wonderful show of blooms this year.
We have a little chestnut tree my sister brought as a seedling and it has "lived" and grown imperceptibly for about 15 years but this year it is putting on new growth and has rewarded us with a blossom. Never give up!
For Arts and Culture Week the show at the Blue Awning was called Forty and on and was honoring this, the 40th year Creston has had a Community Arts Council. On that theme I displayed my knitted touques in groupings of 10, from infant, to child's, to youth, and to adult , with the highest grouping representing all ages and the future.

And then there were two.....

I do think it is spring this time. The chickadees are singing "Spring's coming" from the bushes. There's a large older magnolia tree ( the kind with white blossoms) on the way to the mall that is just coming into bloom and many bushes and trees are just waiting to pop their leaves.

Went driving north toward Sirdar. The banks are covered with dog toothed violets (avalanche lilies) We decided to drive out on the dike: lots of ducks, geese, coots, Black Necked Stilts, a couple swans, a blue heron, swallows, and a mamma black bear with her two last year's cubs!

The Black Necked Stilt is fairly rare here in the Creston Valley. They have wonderful "formal attire" and were quite close to shore so we could stop and see them well.
They have bright orange legs. They are quite showy little birds.
It was one of those days when I again think "Why don't I just put a pair of binoculars in the jeep?"
The binos were at home on the table because that is where the best bird watching starts.
Friday evening we had a pair of vultures soaring and swooping right close to us - so utterly wonderful!
Mamma bear and babies were across the channel from us far enough away that we weren't making her nervous, nor she us.
This week will be Arts and Culture Week across the province. Here in Creston we are again renting "The Blue Awning Gallery" across from the government agent's office on Canyon (main) Street. We have a show opening tonight in the west side and going on for the week with different activities in the east side of the building.
Next Saturday James will be helping Sandy Kunze raky behind Kingfisher Used Books and I will be attending an Artist Trading Card lecture and session at the Painted Turtle Gallery.
James and I are going to the opening of Arts and Culture Week tonight. James is showing the 2 pieces of metal sculpture shown at the top of the post. They are made to hang and are about 4 feet tall.
I have created an installation from some of the many, many toques I knit from Jan through March. The show's theme is Forty Forward, celebrating the 40 years of the existence of the Arts Council here in Creston and looking top the future.
My installation has large picture frames (4 of them) hung vertically and strung with wire like clothes lines and at the bottom I hung, using brightly coloured clothes pins, 10 infant hats for the very years, then, above that, 10 toddler hats, for a bit older, then 10 adolescent hats, and then 10 large adult hats.
In the top frame I have hung many hats of all sizes and colours representing the future.
I'll try to get a picture. James tried but it wasn't until we got home we realized his picture only showed the bottom 3 frames.

Promises of spring

Now that the Wynndel Ats Center is "virtually finished" James has had a chance to do some art himself. This is his metal sculpture from last weekend which he will show in the Art Show celebrating Arts and Culture Week at the "Blue Awning Gallery."
I need to evaluate who we've heard from and who we need to be contacting for this summer's ArtWalk.



Meanwhile, my frantic and joyful round-loom knitting has paid off. I have many, many touques to show as an installation at the Blue Awning and to sell this next fall and have had to have another hand surgery for a very badly triggering thumb. I am swanning about while James does the cooking and dishes. Stitches come out Friday -yea!!!!
Spring progresses slowly without me. The daffodils by the front door are nearly open and the little purple violets are blooming with abandon. These are "better behaved" than some and spreading slowly but my hope is for some more inclined to "take over".


I went up on the hill today to see what new wildflowers are about. These teeny, tiny blue flowers will soon carpet the ground but now they are still few and far between.

This is a slow spring. Down in the Lower Mainland, in the farming communities east and south of Vancouver the strawberry growers say their crops will be later than usual and sparser.
I've suggested to James we plant some of our own strawberries in the chicken pen where the deer can't get them. We had them in a raised bed where the deer ate the berries and James mulched them for one winter so well they composted, poor things.
Yesterday we bought our seed potatoes. At Straight from Earth Natural Food Store in town I see a sign saying they are selling the last of the local carrots and I need to buy some before they are all gone. I'm anxious to see things planted but I am a spectator at this time and it's still pretty cold to expect things to grow.